thanks Sal, I'll try to get the knife on the way to you tomorrow and it will certainly happen by Monday. I think it's really cool that you get on the forums and actually talk with the people that use your knives, and as the last dozen posts of this thread indicate, many others agree.

Any update on this one? I don't doubt Spyderco will take care of this problem. But I'm curious about their findings

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Sal stated in the spyderco sub-forum thread that in soon as the knife got there a replacement would be sent, not a repair. He requested it be addressed specifically to he or Eric. I'm confident that won't change. We should be asking Sal for an update on his findings, if they learned anything. I'm sure it'll be replaced (unless it turns out to be a fake).

Sal stated in the spyderco sub-forum thread that in soon as the knife got there a replacement would be sent, not a repair. He requested it be addressed specifically to he or Eric. I'm confident that won't change. We should be asking Sal for an update on his findings, if they learned anything. I'm sure it'll be replaced (unless it turns out to be a fake).

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If you refer back to the original post, you will see that Eric sent a new knife along with an apology. Kudos to Spyderco!

That said, the knife failed exactly where I would have expected it to fail.

Update: I sent this knife to Spyderco on January 13th and today (January 22nd) got a package back from Spyderco. Inside was an apology letter from Eric Glesser and a new knife that is just as perfect as my first. A+ for Spyderco on customer service!

As long as the OP is completely honest, it has to be a material failure. Hopefully not a whole batch, and isolated to this or just a few others. I am sure that Spyderco did proper R&D and witnessed this exact failure under presumably way more force than the OP applied while carving some pine.

As long as the OP is completely honest, it has to be a material failure. Hopefully not a whole batch, and isolated to this or just a few others. I am sure that Spyderco did proper R&D and witnessed this exact failure under presumably way more force than the OP applied while carving some pine.

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I wouldn't rule out a design flaw out of hand. Perhaps the area of the breakage needs thicker material.

Remember the Bushcraft had breakage issues and Spyderco redesigned it by simply not drilling the hole in the tang closest to the blade.

Thanx Hiwa for the compliment. Chris Claycomb and associates did an excellent job refining the design and our maker is doing an excellent job in construction. I still plan a full flat S90V version. Just have too much going on right now.

Sorry I haven't been back on this thread in a while.
Anyways, I now see that the internal stop pin slot does significantly reduce blade strength but I don't think failure like I had (whether caused by heat treat, crack, etc.) is an issue with this knife. Despite the cutout 4mm of a supersteel like cts-204p should be plenty for almost any task I can think of. Eric told me in the letter I got that they had not seen a single other issue like this despite having sold so many Southards, so I doubt there is a bad batch associated with it.